"Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in His holy place? He that has clean hands and a pure heart! Psalm 24:3.
"Love one another with a pure heart!" 1 Peter 1:12.
"Sanctify yourselves and be holy, for I am holy!" Leviticus 11:44.
"Give to the Lord the glory due to His name. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness!" Leviticus 11:44.
Zechariah describe how holiness must be found in the ceremonial parades of public life. "In that day there shall be upon the bells of the horses "HOLINESS UNTO THE LORD!". Zechariah 14:20.
But, says Zechariah, it must also be found in daily life, even in the domestic kitchens! "Every pot in Jerusalem shall be holiness unto the Lord!" Zechariah 14:21.
"Zacharias was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied `Grant to us that we should serve Him without fear in HOLINESS and righteousness before Him all the days of our life!" Luke 1:67.
Those verses display with clarity that personal holiness is Scriptural. It is not perfection but it is a constant striving towards perfection!
If we were to ask Yehudi Menuhin, considered to be the greatest violinist of all time, if he had ever achieved perfection in his playing, he would say that it is always onward and upward, for today's excellence is still not good enough!
So it is with the best of our spiritual strivings!
In his widely successful evangelical campaigns Gipsy Smith used a campaign chorus "Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me!" He even wrote a book entitled "The Beauty of Jesus" It is a high and lofty prayer, yet it is no greater than the Scriptural promise "We shall be like Him!"
For we were made in the image of God. This is a tremendous statement and many have sought hard to find what it means. But perhaps the ancient prophet Malachi had a glimmer of the truth when he described God as the Divine Refiner.
"For He shall sit as a refiner of silver, and He shall purge as silver!" Malachi 3:3.
A lady in Dublin was so intrigued by this verse that she made it her business to go into the city and to seek out a silversmith and ask him the question "When you refine silver, do you really sit?"
To which the silversmith replied
"Indeed I must, madame, for if I left the silver too long in the fire it
would be spoiled!"
Malachi knew the history of Israel better than most people, of their rebellious nature, and how they became affluent under the reign of Solomon who brought great wealth to the nation. But the price of affluence was that he married pagan wives and brought them to Jerusalem and allowed them to have their idols in the very Temple precincts and even worshipped them himself.
"And it came to pass that his wives turned his heart after other gods. Then did Solomon build an high place for the god Chemosh. And his wives sacrificed to their gods." 1 Kings 11:17.
In their arrogance the Jews reasoned that they could sin with impunity on the logic that their city contained the Temple which contained the Holy of Holies, the dwelling place of the Most High God, and, since this was the case, no enemy could ever capture Jerusalem. So, in their eyes, they could live above the Law. But fall it did, and the whole nation was marched off 600 weary miles to distant Babylon.
On their arrival they must have been overwhelmed by its grandeur and magnificence. The great walls were so wide that three chariots could be driven abreast around the top. Long boulevards stretched into the distance. Pagan gods leered down from every street corner. If the Jews had wanted idolatry they had certainly come to the right place!
It was nothing short of a national disaster! But God had allowed it! And those hard long bitter years were to be the refining years, out of which came Psalm 137. "By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept, yes, we wept when we remembered Zion!" Psalm 137:1.
General Albert Orsborn confesses freely that as a young man he passed through a time of rebellious turmoil because someone else was chosen for a post which he thought should have been his. But from the depths of slow healing following this experience came the words "O forbid me not Thy service, keep me yet in Thine employ - pass me through a sterner cleansing if I may but bring Thee joy!"
It was a costly prayer, but it was written by the same man who wrote the chorus so beloved by Gipsy Smith. "O Thou Spirit Divine, all my nature refine till the beauty of Jesus is seen in me!"
The woman in the Dublin shop sat until she felt she had seen all that there was to see, and quietly made her way to the door, but she had only laid her hand on the handle when the silversmith called after her urgently. "Madame, wait, wait! I have not told you how I know when the silver is ready! I know it is ready when I can see the reflection of my own image on its face!"
What an amazing illustration this Old Testament prophet brings to us, perhaps greater than he realised! For not only is God watching and waiting for our own good, but despite all that sin has done to mar His initial creation He is waiting for that moment when through the wonder of His grace OUR lives reflect His glorious image!
And the beauty of Jesus is seen in us!
Not to our glory in any measure, for just as the moon has no light of its own but merely reflects the greater light of the sun, so we as Christians do nothing more than reflect the glory of God through His Son!
For "every virtue we possess, and every victory won, and every thought of holiness - are His - alone!"
It may seem very demanding, but this is what the world expects from a Christian, and the world has every right to expect it! But far beyond that, it is what God demands of His people. He expects nothing more, and He will accept nothing less! Than that we should strive "To be like Jesus!"
May our constant prayer be "O Thou Spirit Divine all my nature refine - till the beauty of Jesus be seen in me!"
"Blessed are the pure in heart -
for they shall see God.
